Chinese walker

Something shaming often happens when you clatter up a dusty track and enter any of Africa%26rsquo;s famous national parks, or even some quieter ones, such as Malawi%26rsquo;s Liwonde, which I visited recently. Almost all those outside are black and very poor. Most of those inside, at least the tourists, are white and rich. Quite often you pass through a high electric fence, though whether it is intended to keep the animals in or the hungry poor out is not always clear.

The boundary between the preserved world and the real one is explicit. Beyond Liwonde, life is lived in one of Africa%26rsquo;s populous nations. Women hoe cassava fields; minibuses hoot at petrol stations in search of fuel (Malawi is short of foreign exchange and so petrol). There is commitment and endeavour and hope: lots of small businesses with cheery hand-painted slogans (%26ldquo;Save water, drink beer%26rdquo;, suggested one roadside bar).

And just the other side of the fence, there is silence and beauty, and a wide river lagoon packed with belching hippos %26ndash; a magical place of the sort people fly to Africa to find. But the park is sustained, in part, by a form of tourism detached from the realities of a continent about to see its one-billionth inhabitant. Westerners are more likely these days to be clutching a zoom-lens Nikon camera than a rifle, but the effect is still deadly: a gated cul-de-sac for the natural environment, hawked to the west as a long-haul luxury product.

Brochures are awash with nostalgia for a colonial dream world, the myth of the wilderness. %26ldquo;Imagine the Africa of the great safari era, when blazing sunsets melted into lantern-lit romance and service was an effortless whisper,%26rdquo; declares one, and it is typical. Fantasies such as these, priced out of reach of almost every African, demean a continent and detach themselves from science or conservation. Lions are a backdrop to a sunset gin and tonic, as unreal as the Disney king of the jungle. No one mentions that when the Liwonde park was created in 1973, villages were evicted to make room for game.

This sounds unfair to the efforts of good people. Sustainable tourism is more than a slogan; some tourist projects raise money for schools and health care. Parks provide foreign exchange, and without them there would be little incentive to preserve ecosystems. Only a brute could wish for fewer elephants in the world, or to see the warthog snuffle its last, or trees cut down for charcoal, which will damage the soil, disrupt the rains and heat up a continent facing environmental crisis.

It is undeniable that Africa%26rsquo;s conservation movement has achieved magnificent things in tough conditions. Few indigenous species have become extinct; even the strange half-striped okapi from the Congo basin survives, with a tongue so long it can wash its own ears. Despite the horrible trade in powdered rhino horn, sold to a Chinese elite in search of stimulation, brave men and women have, so far, kept the rare black rhino alive in the wild.

All this should be celebrated. But can it last, with Africa%26rsquo;s population set to double in the next 50 years and its people %26ndash; as they should %26ndash; wanting wealth and jobs?

We want Africa to keep its environment untamed, as we never did ourselves. Lincolnshire, in England, too was once wild, before we chopped down the trees and drained its soils to grow potatoes. No one now suggests fencing the county off and letting it revert to wolves %26ndash; but we expect Africa to shoulder the burden. Almost 40% of Tanzania has protected status. Can a growing continent afford it?

Mo Ibrahim, the admirable Sudanese-born philanthropist, recently pointed out in the Guardian that Africa does not %26ndash; contrary to repeated claims %26ndash; have a problem with overpopulation. It has 20% of the world%26rsquo;s land and only 13% of its people. It also has some of the planet%26rsquo;s most outstanding ecology, and it is greatly to Africa%26rsquo;s credit that so many reserves have thrived. But who can blame a poor country for turning its eyes towards obvious sources of wealth %26ndash; Tanzania and soda-rich Lake Natron, which an Indian company wanted to exploit despite its precious population of flamingos, or the Kongou Falls in Gabon, threatened by a Chinese iron-ore project? In 2002 Gabon declared 10% of its land to be national parks. Well-fed conservation-minded Britain cannot match that.

It isn%26rsquo;t hard to take a stand against ivory poachers or an international conglomerate intent on ripping the wealth out of Africa. But should the peasant farmer, desperate for new land, be condemned in the same way? In the 1990s locals smashed down the fence and invaded Liwonde park, almost wiping out its wildlife. They were driven back, but the truce is temporary.

A better balance has to be found. African governments, and tour operators, need to leave income from parks with the people who live near them. And tourists need to stop imagining they are visiting an empty continent in the guise of a latter-day Livingstone or Stanley. They should see wildlife, but meet people too. If one of 50 chose an 18-hour total immersion in rural life, precious dovetails between a park and its surrounds would grow.

The word %26ldquo;stakeholder%26rdquo; has been horribly abused; but unless the world can find a way of giving ownership of Africa%26rsquo;s parks to Africa%26rsquo;s people, the parks will be doomed and the people diminished.

www.guardian.co.uk/

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Homepage image by ollipitkanen

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Dialogue Businesses

The history of the forced removal of the Lakota Sioux from their lands, while it seems to have happened long ago, is vibrantly alive for the Indians living on the reservation today. Many of them can tell stories of how their parents were sent to faraway boarding schools and taught that their culture was inferior. The ban on Lakota culture and language was lifted only in 1971, well within the memory of many living adults.

The profound cultural trauma that these people have experienced has left many of them deeply hopeless and without a clear sense of their own future or destiny as a nation. Everywhere I went during a week I spent on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, I heard again the stories of the treaty of 1868, of the massacre at Wounded Knee, and of the theft of the sacred Black Hills which are held to be the origin of the Lakota people. I experienced the profound mistrust of outsiders, particularly white people. And I witnessed among some residents a sense of defeat far more profound than any I have observed in all my travels in less developed countries throughout the world.

On the reservation today, the only truly successful business is a gambling casino called Prairie Winds (Native Americans are exempt from state prohibitions on organised gambling). Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, many of those who lose money are themselves Native Americans. There is talk of developing wind power; so far these conversations have not led to substantial results. While there is also talk of oil and mineral resources, the Indians will not permit the sacred lands to be scarred with mines, and in a case of %26ldquo;environmental injustice%26rdquo;, new uranium mines off the reservation threaten to taint downstream Indian rivers with radioactive materials.

There are signs of hope, but these are few: two Native American brothers have been appointed to lead the Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore. An image of the great Indian warrior Crazy Horse is being carved a few miles away from the images of the US presidents. A sacred Black Hills mountain, Bear Butte, is being closed to non-Indians during times when rituals are most important, although its peace is also gravely threatened by the opening of a nearby rifle range, and the bars, campgrounds, and concert venues have greatly offended the local tribes.

A college, the Oglala Lakota College, has been opened on the reservation, where it offers advanced degrees in Lakota studies, nursing, business, information science, social work and other relevant fields. A %26ldquo;Lakotafund%26rdquo; has been created to extend micro-credit to small businesses such as beadwork and other traditional handicrafts. Some who have left the reservation to pursue advanced degrees and learn skills in other parts of the country have returned to try to make a contribution back home.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, the National Museum of the American Indian, established in 1989 by an act of Congress in an effort to acknowledge the great wrong of our history, is managed by Native Americans, whose greatest desire is to convey the message that %26ldquo;we%26rsquo;re still here%26rdquo;. Whether the US president, Barack Obama, will encourage Congress to revisit the great question of ownership of the Black Hills, and whether there are symbolic measures that could be taken to help move the Sioux nation toward healing, remains to be seen.

What, then, are we to take as lessons from this horrific story, and what might be relevant for Chinese policy makers today? First, it is worth reflecting on the relationship between resources, land, nation-building, and power %26ndash; and reflecting seriously on the question of how to build a strong, prosperous nation while safeguarding justice for all citizens. Sometimes rigorous introspection and honesty may be required to discover whether one is using cultural superiority and stereotyping as a way to rationalise the seizure of other people%26rsquo;s land. In this case, resource extraction was a primary motivation for seizing Indians%26rsquo; land, but it was often cloaked in rhetoric about doing what was best for the Indians.

Second, good intentions can sometimes be highly destructive. The American missionaries and civilisers truly believed that in forbidding the use of Lakota language and the practice of Lakota customs they were doing the right thing %26ndash; even, perhaps, saving the Indians%26rsquo; %26ldquo;souls%26rdquo; and allowing them to find a place in heaven by converting them to Christianity. However, the deprivation of identity and pride has turned out to be devastating for the native people, who are now trying to recover some of their traditions by reviving rituals such as the Sun Dance and to re-learn their language in native-run schools.

Third, modern technologies such as the gun, the road and the railroad, and foreign diseases such as smallpox, were highly destructive to the native peoples, and created an %26ldquo;uneven playing field%26rdquo; such that the native peoples had little chance of preserving their way of life. As environmental historians such as Jared Diamond and Alfred Crosby teach us, the outcome of this sort of clash of cultures can be determined as much by technology, disease and introduced species as by more conventional measures of military superiority.

Fourth, one of the high prices of civilisation and resource extraction is often environmental degradation and ecosystem transformation. Instead of the buffalo, passenger pigeon and tall grass prairie, the central United States saw desertification and dust storms, especially in the 1920s, a heavy and enduring price to pay for our overly enthusiastic grazing and farming practices.

Finally, indigenous peoples%26rsquo; knowledge, while often not expressed in ways that modern %26ldquo;science%26rdquo; can hear and respect, nonetheless often can point the way toward more sustainable relationships with the land. Although some have warned against romanticising Native American wisdom and called %26ldquo;the ecological Indian%26rdquo; a myth, it is undeniable that the Sioux elders predicted that in the wasteful and over-consuming way of the white man lay ecological disaster.

I hope that this cautionary tale of the Pine Ridge Sioux provides fruit for reflection and discussion. Although there are obviously great historical differences between the United States and China, we have much to learn from each other, especially at this time when the gaps in our economic and social development are decreasing and we are coming more and more to resemble each other.

Judith Shapiro is director of the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development MA Program at the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC.

Homepage image by Serge Van Cauwenbergh

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Dialogue Businesses, china, SAFE

Something shaming often happens when you clatter up a dusty track and enter any of Africa%26rsquo;s famous national parks, or even some quieter ones, such as Malawi%26rsquo;s Liwonde, which I visited recently. Almost all those outside are black and very poor. Most of those inside, at least the tourists, are white and rich. Quite often you pass through a high electric fence, though whether it is intended to keep the animals in or the hungry poor out is not always clear.

The boundary between the preserved world and the real one is explicit. Beyond Liwonde, life is lived in one of Africa%26rsquo;s populous nations. Women hoe cassava fields; minibuses hoot at petrol stations in search of fuel (Malawi is short of foreign exchange and so petrol). There is commitment and endeavour and hope: lots of small businesses with cheery hand-painted slogans (%26ldquo;Save water, drink beer%26rdquo;, suggested one roadside bar).

And just the other side of the fence, there is silence and beauty, and a wide river lagoon packed with belching hippos %26ndash; a magical place of the sort people fly to Africa to find. But the park is sustained, in part, by a form of tourism detached from the realities of a continent about to see its one-billionth inhabitant. Westerners are more likely these days to be clutching a zoom-lens Nikon camera than a rifle, but the effect is still deadly: a gated cul-de-sac for the natural environment, hawked to the west as a long-haul luxury product.

Brochures are awash with nostalgia for a colonial dream world, the myth of the wilderness. %26ldquo;Imagine the Africa of the great safari era, when blazing sunsets melted into lantern-lit romance and service was an effortless whisper,%26rdquo; declares one, and it is typical. Fantasies such as these, priced out of reach of almost every African, demean a continent and detach themselves from science or conservation. Lions are a backdrop to a sunset gin and tonic, as unreal as the Disney king of the jungle. No one mentions that when the Liwonde park was created in 1973, villages were evicted to make room for game.

This sounds unfair to the efforts of good people. Sustainable tourism is more than a slogan; some tourist projects raise money for schools and health care. Parks provide foreign exchange, and without them there would be little incentive to preserve ecosystems. Only a brute could wish for fewer elephants in the world, or to see the warthog snuffle its last, or trees cut down for charcoal, which will damage the soil, disrupt the rains and heat up a continent facing environmental crisis.

It is undeniable that Africa%26rsquo;s conservation movement has achieved magnificent things in tough conditions. Few indigenous species have become extinct; even the strange half-striped okapi from the Congo basin survives, with a tongue so long it can wash its own ears. Despite the horrible trade in powdered rhino horn, sold to a Chinese elite in search of stimulation, brave men and women have, so far, kept the rare black rhino alive in the wild.

All this should be celebrated. But can it last, with Africa%26rsquo;s population set to double in the next 50 years and its people %26ndash; as they should %26ndash; wanting wealth and jobs?

We want Africa to keep its environment untamed, as we never did ourselves. Lincolnshire, in England, too was once wild, before we chopped down the trees and drained its soils to grow potatoes. No one now suggests fencing the county off and letting it revert to wolves %26ndash; but we expect Africa to shoulder the burden. Almost 40% of Tanzania has protected status. Can a growing continent afford it?

Mo Ibrahim, the admirable Sudanese-born philanthropist, recently pointed out in the Guardian that Africa does not %26ndash; contrary to repeated claims %26ndash; have a problem with overpopulation. It has 20% of the world%26rsquo;s land and only 13% of its people. It also has some of the planet%26rsquo;s most outstanding ecology, and it is greatly to Africa%26rsquo;s credit that so many reserves have thrived. But who can blame a poor country for turning its eyes towards obvious sources of wealth %26ndash; Tanzania and soda-rich Lake Natron, which an Indian company wanted to exploit despite its precious population of flamingos, or the Kongou Falls in Gabon, threatened by a Chinese iron-ore project? In 2002 Gabon declared 10% of its land to be national parks. Well-fed conservation-minded Britain cannot match that.

It isn%26rsquo;t hard to take a stand against ivory poachers or an international conglomerate intent on ripping the wealth out of Africa. But should the peasant farmer, desperate for new land, be condemned in the same way? In the 1990s locals smashed down the fence and invaded Liwonde park, almost wiping out its wildlife. They were driven back, but the truce is temporary.

A better balance has to be found. African governments, and tour operators, need to leave income from parks with the people who live near them. And tourists need to stop imagining they are visiting an empty continent in the guise of a latter-day Livingstone or Stanley. They should see wildlife, but meet people too. If one of 50 chose an 18-hour total immersion in rural life, precious dovetails between a park and its surrounds would grow.

The word %26ldquo;stakeholder%26rdquo; has been horribly abused; but unless the world can find a way of giving ownership of Africa%26rsquo;s parks to Africa%26rsquo;s people, the parks will be doomed and the people diminished.

www.guardian.co.uk/

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Homepage image by ollipitkanen

Related posts

• The VAT regulations have been amended in the following five areas: (0)
• The business of biodiversity (0)
• The business of biodiversity (0)
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Dialogue Businesses

The history of the forced removal of the Lakota Sioux from their lands, while it seems to have happened long ago, is vibrantly alive for the Indians living on the reservation today. Many of them can tell stories of how their parents were sent to faraway boarding schools and taught that their culture was inferior. The ban on Lakota culture and language was lifted only in 1971, well within the memory of many living adults.

The profound cultural trauma that these people have experienced has left many of them deeply hopeless and without a clear sense of their own future or destiny as a nation. Everywhere I went during a week I spent on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, I heard again the stories of the treaty of 1868, of the massacre at Wounded Knee, and of the theft of the sacred Black Hills which are held to be the origin of the Lakota people. I experienced the profound mistrust of outsiders, particularly white people. And I witnessed among some residents a sense of defeat far more profound than any I have observed in all my travels in less developed countries throughout the world.

On the reservation today, the only truly successful business is a gambling casino called Prairie Winds (Native Americans are exempt from state prohibitions on organised gambling). Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, many of those who lose money are themselves Native Americans. There is talk of developing wind power; so far these conversations have not led to substantial results. While there is also talk of oil and mineral resources, the Indians will not permit the sacred lands to be scarred with mines, and in a case of %26ldquo;environmental injustice%26rdquo;, new uranium mines off the reservation threaten to taint downstream Indian rivers with radioactive materials.

There are signs of hope, but these are few: two Native American brothers have been appointed to lead the Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore. An image of the great Indian warrior Crazy Horse is being carved a few miles away from the images of the US presidents. A sacred Black Hills mountain, Bear Butte, is being closed to non-Indians during times when rituals are most important, although its peace is also gravely threatened by the opening of a nearby rifle range, and the bars, campgrounds, and concert venues have greatly offended the local tribes.

A college, the Oglala Lakota College, has been opened on the reservation, where it offers advanced degrees in Lakota studies, nursing, business, information science, social work and other relevant fields. A %26ldquo;Lakotafund%26rdquo; has been created to extend micro-credit to small businesses such as beadwork and other traditional handicrafts. Some who have left the reservation to pursue advanced degrees and learn skills in other parts of the country have returned to try to make a contribution back home.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, the National Museum of the American Indian, established in 1989 by an act of Congress in an effort to acknowledge the great wrong of our history, is managed by Native Americans, whose greatest desire is to convey the message that %26ldquo;we%26rsquo;re still here%26rdquo;. Whether the US president, Barack Obama, will encourage Congress to revisit the great question of ownership of the Black Hills, and whether there are symbolic measures that could be taken to help move the Sioux nation toward healing, remains to be seen.

What, then, are we to take as lessons from this horrific story, and what might be relevant for Chinese policy makers today? First, it is worth reflecting on the relationship between resources, land, nation-building, and power %26ndash; and reflecting seriously on the question of how to build a strong, prosperous nation while safeguarding justice for all citizens. Sometimes rigorous introspection and honesty may be required to discover whether one is using cultural superiority and stereotyping as a way to rationalise the seizure of other people%26rsquo;s land. In this case, resource extraction was a primary motivation for seizing Indians%26rsquo; land, but it was often cloaked in rhetoric about doing what was best for the Indians.

Second, good intentions can sometimes be highly destructive. The American missionaries and civilisers truly believed that in forbidding the use of Lakota language and the practice of Lakota customs they were doing the right thing %26ndash; even, perhaps, saving the Indians%26rsquo; %26ldquo;souls%26rdquo; and allowing them to find a place in heaven by converting them to Christianity. However, the deprivation of identity and pride has turned out to be devastating for the native people, who are now trying to recover some of their traditions by reviving rituals such as the Sun Dance and to re-learn their language in native-run schools.

Third, modern technologies such as the gun, the road and the railroad, and foreign diseases such as smallpox, were highly destructive to the native peoples, and created an %26ldquo;uneven playing field%26rdquo; such that the native peoples had little chance of preserving their way of life. As environmental historians such as Jared Diamond and Alfred Crosby teach us, the outcome of this sort of clash of cultures can be determined as much by technology, disease and introduced species as by more conventional measures of military superiority.

Fourth, one of the high prices of civilisation and resource extraction is often environmental degradation and ecosystem transformation. Instead of the buffalo, passenger pigeon and tall grass prairie, the central United States saw desertification and dust storms, especially in the 1920s, a heavy and enduring price to pay for our overly enthusiastic grazing and farming practices.

Finally, indigenous peoples%26rsquo; knowledge, while often not expressed in ways that modern %26ldquo;science%26rdquo; can hear and respect, nonetheless often can point the way toward more sustainable relationships with the land. Although some have warned against romanticising Native American wisdom and called %26ldquo;the ecological Indian%26rdquo; a myth, it is undeniable that the Sioux elders predicted that in the wasteful and over-consuming way of the white man lay ecological disaster.

I hope that this cautionary tale of the Pine Ridge Sioux provides fruit for reflection and discussion. Although there are obviously great historical differences between the United States and China, we have much to learn from each other, especially at this time when the gaps in our economic and social development are decreasing and we are coming more and more to resemble each other.

Judith Shapiro is director of the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development MA Program at the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC.

Homepage image by Serge Van Cauwenbergh

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• Enhance Confidence and Consolidate Works to Keep the development of Commercial Businesses Effective and Rapid, National Meeting on Commercial Works Held in Beijing (0)
• The VAT regulations have been amended in the following five areas: (0)
• The science of storage (0)
• The Mekong under threat (0)

Dialogue Businesses, china, SAFE

It is clear that water-related climate impacts spill over China%26rsquo;s borders, increasing the importance of water issues in China%26rsquo;s foreign and regional security poli%26shy;cies.

This concern is reflected in the attitudes of China%26rsquo;s neighbours. In Pakistan, for instance, officials have suggested that changes in Himalayan meltwater could devas%26shy;tate agriculture in this already fragile country. A 2008 study from the Earth Policy Institute makes clear the heavy dependence of vast numbers of people on agriculture fed by glacial meltwater and an Asia Society report has similarly concluded that hydro-politics will be an increasingly potent force in Asian security.

The Mekong River system presents particular challenges for China%26rsquo;s security. Relations between China and its downstream neighbours in the Mekong basin have long been fragile. This situation is likely to be exacerbated by the construction of several dams in Chinese territory, which restrict flow to downstream nations. If, as climate models suggest, water flow to the Mekong becomes more vari%26shy;able under climate change, China%26rsquo;s %26ldquo;asymmetric%26rdquo; control of the river%26rsquo;s headwaters will become an issue of even greater concern to south-east Asian nations.

This power asymmetry is of special significance since research on water and con%26shy;flict suggests a high density of dams is associated with conflictive behaviour unless freshwater treaties are involved. China has steadfastly refused to join such %26ldquo;hard law%26rdquo; regimes in the Mekong region. Thus it seems reasonable to assert that China will have to improve its cooperative frameworks and increase diplomacy if it is to avoid significant tension with Mekong nations as the flow of the river changes along with the climate.

There are some signs that China%26rsquo;s strategic studies community is beginning to come to grips with these realities. China%26rsquo;s %26ldquo;New Security Concept%26rdquo;, promulgated since the late 1990s, addresses environmental and social issues, and emphasises cooperation and dialogue as a means of conducting foreign relations.

As a subset of this trend, China%26rsquo;s strategic studies and interna%26shy;tional relations community has devoted increasing attention to the potentially destabilising impacts of climate change. For example, citing the broadening defini%26shy;tion of security in the west, one prominent Chinese article advocates creating a special policy research group that focusses on the political and security dimensions of environmen%26shy;tal change.

Moreover, a series of western studies, including a widely-read 2004 study from the US Department of Defense, have prompted commentary within China on the possibility that climate-related resource shortages could lead to conflict or even war. Some non-official commentators have, more specifically, identified water-related conflict as a growing threat to relations between China and neighbouring countries.

Water issues have, in parallel with this commentary, become more prominent in China%26rsquo;s relations with some neighbours. China has in recent years con%26shy;cluded a number of agreements with countries including Russia and Kazakhstan regarding the demarcation and protection of transboundary rivers. Furthermore, the Shang%26shy;hai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), initially promoted largely as a body for expand%26shy;ing security cooperation, has begun working on water issues. The SCO%26rsquo;s 2004 meet%26shy;ing was devoted to water and, in 2005, the organisation signed a compact with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to broaden cooperation on water resources.

In contrast, however, the Chinese government has appeared hesitant to link cli%26shy;mate change and security at a general level. Beijing has strongly opposed United Nations efforts to connect the two by debat%26shy;ing climate change issues in the Security Council. China Daily, the country%26rsquo;s offi%26shy;cial English-language newspaper, editorialised that %26ldquo;The call for the international community to address climate change is sensible, but sensationalising it as an issue of security is conspiratorial.%26rdquo;

One could read this hesitancy in several ways. China%26rsquo;s long-standing support for the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs probably leads to suspicion of non-traditional security paradigms. In addition, it is important to view the government%26rsquo;s reluctance to link climate change and security in general in the context of Beijing%26rsquo;s determination to avoid binding greenhouse-gas emissions reductions. Nonetheless, there is substantial evidence to suggest a shift of think%26shy;ing is taking place at the domestic level, prompted in large part by the social challenges posed by a changing climate.

If at the international level Chinese officials take a dim view of linking cli%26shy;mate change and security, domestically they appear to take very seriously the conse%26shy;quences of water-related climate-change impacts. Premier Wen Jiabao, for instance, was quoted in 1998 as saying, %26ldquo;The survival of the Chinese nation is threatened by the country%26rsquo;s shortage of water.%26rdquo; Lin Erda, a prominent member of the Chinese Academy of Agricul%26shy;tural Sciences, has similarly called attention to the threat posed by retreat%26shy;ing glaciers, saying that these and other effects of climate change %26ldquo;directly threaten China%26rsquo;s food security%26rdquo;.

The winter drought of 2008 to 2009 also indicated the government%26rsquo;s concern for water issues, with state media reporting in its wake that %26ldquo;Agriculture is a top government priority.%26rdquo;

Several of China%26rsquo;s most strategically important regions are predicted to suffer sig%26shy;nificant water resource shortages as a result of climate change. Some 23% of China%26rsquo;s population lives in western regions, where glacial meltwater provides the principal dry season water source, and as glaciers melt, water will become increas%26shy;ingly scarce.

One study blames climate change for causing a decrease in stream flow during the summer months. This induces de%26shy;sertification, which, exacerbated by population growth, has imposed serious socio%26shy;economic costs on an already poor area. Such impacts are particularly significant since these western regions are not only impoverished but also the most restive in China, being home to ethnic minorities who have long mounted challenges to Bei%26shy;jing%26rsquo;s rule.

Changes in water availability in China%26rsquo;s north-west can pose security challenges in two primary ways. First, competition over scarce resources can exacerbate existing tensions between China%26rsquo;s majority Han ethnic group and minority groups such as Tibetans and Uyghurs. As a 2009 Asia Society report concluded, %26ldquo;One could certainly foresee the potential for conflict as urbanisation and industry begin to deplete al%26shy;ready scarce water supplies, particularly if certain Han-run businesses are perceived to be receiving favourable treatment in water resource allotment.%26rdquo;

Second, water scarcity could increase the number of %26ldquo;environmental refugees%26rdquo; %26ndash; a well established concept in Chinese discourse that describes the internal migration of people to regions where resources seem more plentiful %26ndash; from the north-west, potentially inflaming ethnic tensions as they seek opportunity elsewhere in China.

Sociological studies have found that an increasing number of farmers in Gansu province are abandoning their lands as a result of declining water resources. Similar phenomena have been described in Tibet, where a variety of challenges are inducing higher rates of out-migration of ethnic Tibetans.

The danger posed by such %26ldquo;environmental refugees%26rdquo; is that they may be deprived of the means to sustain livelihoods in their new homes. Research has indicated that gradual environmental deterioration affects the very poor disproportionately; al%26shy;ready bereft of resources, they have little capacity to re-establish themselves elsewhere. Arable land is scarce in China, and environmental refugees, pulled away from their livelihoods and kinship networks, often face great diffi%26shy;culty setting up new livelihoods when forced to resettle. This prospect is particularly notable because, while the concept of %26ldquo;environmental refugees%26rdquo; is well established in Chinese academia, relatively little attention is devoted to potential domestic impacts.

Scott Moore is a graduate student at the University of Oxford%26rsquo;s Environmental Change Institute and previously held a Fulbright Fellowship at the College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Peking University.

An earlier version of this article was published in China Security in 2009 as %26ldquo;Climate Change, Water, and China%26rsquo;s National Interest%26rdquo;, Vol.5, No.3. It is used here with permission.

NEXT: A threat to food security?

Homepage image from Greenpeace

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Dialogue Businesses, china

On returning from the climate conference at Copenhagen, the Vanke Group chairman, Wang Shi, posted a picture of himself pushing an old bike through the streets of the city on his blog. On December 7, the head of the largest property company in China %26ndash; who climbs an 8,000-metre high mountain every year %26ndash; had joined a group of Chinese businessmen on a week-long cycling tour around the city, after which he announced the saving of 115 kilograms of carbon.

The trip was quickly branded a mere stunt. But Wang did not seem to mind, saying that, unlike actors, the businessmen were playing themselves and that he hoped to see more, and better, such events in the future. Afterwards, he and his companions made numerous appearances in the Chinese media, talking about Copenhagen and advocating low-carbon ideas.

On December 5, Wang and Feng Lun, chairman of Beijing Vantone Real Estate, were chosen to board the %26ldquo;Climate Express%26rdquo;, a special train from Brussels to Copenhagen organised by the United Nations Environment Program, the International Union of Railways and the World Wildlife Fund. Another group of %26ldquo;green entrepreneurs%26rdquo;, including Marjorie Yang, chairwoman of textile manufacturer Esquel Group; Zhang Yue, chairman of Broad Air-conditioning; Zhang Zaidong, chairman of Beijing Fengshang Real Estate; Song Jun, president of hotel and travel investment firm Beijing Jiuhan Tiancheng and Huang Ming, chairman of Himin Solar Energy Group travelled north from Germany with Lu Zhi, Peking University professor and head of the Shanshui Conservation Centre. They met with Deutsche Bank%26rsquo;s climate finance team in Frankfurt, visited Europe%26rsquo;s solar-power %26ldquo;capital%26rdquo;, Freiburg, and then joined the property group in Copenhagen.

This was the first time Chinese entrepreneurs had attended a UN climate-change conference as observers and a rare high-profile appearance at an international climate-change event. Hopes were high for these enlightened businessmen, both in China and overseas. So what did they actually do?

At a small ceremony to mark the start of the trip held at Beijing%26rsquo;s exclusive Chang%26rsquo;an Club, they said they wanted to put forward the Chinese business world%26rsquo;s stance on climate change, and learn about the business risks and opportunities it will bring. On December 8, they set out this stance at their first appearance in Copenhagen. This took place away from the Bella Center, the main conference facility, at the five-star Radisson hotel, where Chinese premier Wen Jiabao would later stay. Unfortunately very few foreign reporters were present and almost all the attendees were Chinese. So why, those present wondered, couldn%26rsquo;t they just have held the press conference in China?

On December 11, these business leaders were not present at the Business Day event, hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBSCD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).

The WBCSD has 200 members, including Shell, Duke Energy, E.ON, BP and Rio Tinto. At Copenhagen the WBCSD advocated a global carbon market and a voluntary industrial code, covering industry, agricultural oil use, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage. The ICC, a similar organisation whose members include several major polluters such as Areva, Exxon Mobil and Vattenfall, continued to tell political leaders that business is part of the solution and that economic growth and free trade should be given priority.

The reason the Chinese group was absent was simpler than many thought. The head of the delegation, Wang Shi, had already left Copenhagen due to a prior engagement and the other members, for the most part having poor English and little experience of international events, were not too keen to attend %26ndash; and so they didn%26rsquo;t.

As head of one of the world%26rsquo;s largest property firms, Wang Shi was undoubtedly the most prominent member of the delegation. In 2007, Vanke started to use reusable steel frames in buildings, rather than the traditional wood. Over the past three years, this method has been applied to 600,000 square metres of building space and, after Copenhagen, Wang set a new target of two million square metres. His ambitions do not stop there, however. Wang wants to lead China%26rsquo;s property sector in making a contribution of more than 10% to China%26rsquo;s 2020 emissions target.

Wang told all of this to the Wall Street Journal and Daily Telegraph newspapers while he was on the Climate Express, to widespread acclaim. And so his early departure, to a certain extent, reduced the voice of Chinese business at Copenhagen. More disappointing was the fact that, although the Business Day was on the agenda provided at the pre-departure press conference and was widely reported in both Chinese and western media, not a single Chinese businessperson was seen at the actual event.

However, the Business Day, which brought together chief executives of giant multinationals, was also lacking attendees from South Africa, Brazil and India. Moreover, those who did attend did not gain much. As Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change told them, the negotiations going on at the Bella Center were inter-governmental and the participants temporarily had to put business to one side.

The delegation was more influenced by events not on the agenda; namely, the civil society activities they attended as private individuals, such as marches organised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Song Jun of the Jiuhan Tiancheng, commented that the range of protests by NGO members gave him more to think about than the disorganised negotiations and dull reports and made him more determined than ever to keep his business on a green path. This entrepeneur, often criticised for being too idealistic, has always tried to persuade more people to accept traditional Chinese ideas of conservation, calling for a limit on human demands rather than technical solutions to environmental and climate issues.

In 2002, Song started investing in the Moonlight Lake eco-tourism project in the deserts of Inner Mongolia, in northern China. But it is hard to stick to environmental ideals in today%26rsquo;s China and he has suffered a number of financial setbacks, only making a profit after five or six years. Next he plans to implement his new grasslands conservation plan in Xilin Gol, which aims to bring back herders forced to leave by environmental problems. The plan won support from Wang Shi and Zhang Zaidong at Copenhagen %26ndash; perhaps the most concrete result Song got from the summit.

Regardless, many people were left disappointed by the performance of these entrepreneurs at Copenhagen. Like the Chinese government, the Chinese business world has, over the last few years, been striving to improve communications and keep up with the global response to climate change and environmental protection. But getting that message across fully and accurately still needs work.

However, some are doing better than others. The story of how Zhang Yue of Broad Air-conditioning gave up his private jet is well known. And Broad’s non-electric air-conditioners were the focus of the only corporate case study in a report presented to G8 leaders by former UK prime minister Tony Blair in 2008. Zhang came and went at Copenhagen, clutching his own document, Measures to Reduce CO2 Emissions. He believes that there is huge potential for emissions reductions to be made by the Chinese public, though nobody knows how he has worked this out.

Many are also familiar with the story of Huang Ming%26rsquo;s solar empire and he was one of the delegation%26rsquo;s most active speakers. He also organised a football match to urge countries not to pass the buck on climate change and, on returning to China, called for COP18, the UN-sponsored climate summit scheduled for 2012, to be held in China. Shi Zhengrong of solar firm Suntech Power is even better known internationally. In May 2009, he was the only Chinese entrepreneur from the private sector to appear at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Unfortunately he was not able to be present at COP15.

But, for these business personalities, whether they come across well or badly is not the important thing. Wang Shi, Zhang Yue and Song Jun are more concerned about the weak message sent out by Copenhagen. Without a clear, strong and long signal, it is hard for businesses to make investment decisions %26ndash; even for these pioneers who have not hestitated in going with the green flow.

Feng Jie is a journalist at Southern Weekend and was formerly a reporter at the China Economic Herald.

Homepage image from hudong.com shows (left to right) Song Jun, Feng Lun, Wang Shi, Zhang Yue and Zhang Zaidong.

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Dialogue bank, Businesses, china, financial, ICC, Investment

Welcome to the International Year of Biodiversity. Throughout 2010, countless initiatives will promote the protection of biodiversity and encourage businesses, governments and individuals to take action to reduce the constant loss of biological diversity worldwide. And not before time.

Biodiversity has long been the Cinderella, the overlooked topic, among environmental issues, with even the chief executives of some of the world%26rsquo;s biggest corporations comfortably confident it has little, if anything, to do with their day-to-day preoccupations %26ndash; except, of course, where their operations directly impact rainforests, temperate wetlands or coral reefs, as in the case of a food company using palm oil whose production has involved the clearance of virgin forest.

Most business leaders assume that the protection of species and genetic diversity is a matter for governments. And they are not wrong in making that assumption. But, as the evidence of biodiversity erosion mounts and the sense of government failure in many parts of the world begins to press in, the risk grows that business will be called to account.

The International Year of Biodiversity will focus on corporations and their supply chains as agents of biodiversity destruction. But it will also, and perhaps more importantly, treat them as one of the few agents of change with the capacity to come up with innovative new solutions to a challenge that has undermined so many past civilisations. So it is worth reviewing why biodiversity is a legitimate concern both for corporations and those who regulate them and why it is unlikely to remain the Cinderella for much longer.

The evidence suggests that biodiversity is declining severely across the board. Forests, for example, have been shrinking at the rate of 60,000 square kilometres a year since 2000; average hard coral cover in the Caribbean has declined from 50% of the sea floor to 10% within the last three decades; and 35% of mangroves have disappeared in the last 20 years. A survey of 3,000 wild species from 1970 to 2000 showed a consistent decline of 40% in average species abundance, with a 50% reduction of inland water species and a 30% decline in inland and marine species.

Were there such a thing as the Board of Earth Inc., it would be facing a reduction in biodiversity and related forms of natural capital at a pace 1,000 times greater than background rates typical of the planet%26rsquo;s past. Even a world that allowed the sub-prime version of capitalism to run riot ought to be more than a little concerned when faced with such trends. Indeed, there is an increasingly urgent imperative to mainstream biodiversity into the policies, plans and budgets of both the public and private sectors.

Although there have been positive private-sector contributions, the response from the business world to these trends and calls to action, over time, has been decidedly mixed. Industries with large footprints, such as oil and gas and mining, were early movers on the biodiversity agenda, due to a visibly direct impact on landscapes and their need to secure a licence to operate. As a consequence, companies like Shell have invested in biodiversity assessments and, more recently, biodiversity offsets.

Likewise, the relationship between the food-production sector and biodiversity came into focus in a high-profile way with campaigns against McDonald%26rsquo;s for purchasing beef raised on former rain forest land and, more recently, feeding chickens with soya grown on deforested Amazon terrain. These and other cases have helped spur the development of better agricultural-management practices to reduce environmental impacts, though they are not spreading nearly fast enough.

In the run-up to last December%26rsquo;s climate change conference in Copenhagen, some government and business leaders acknowledged the ways in which the climate-change agenda could drive a re-evaluation of the services that natural habitats play in regulating carbon cycles and building ecological and economic resilience. However, while sustainability experts agree that biodiversity conservation is a top priority %26ndash; as seen most recently in a 2009 survey from consultancies SustainAbility and Globescan of nearly 1,700 experts across multiple sectors, with 82% agreeing that it is very or somewhat urgent %26ndash; generally business does not appear to rank it as a significant concern.

More specifically, of the 50 leading businesses reporting on sustainability in 2006, we found that only three made an explicit mention of biodiversity as a financially significant concern. The US health-care company Johnson %26amp; Johnson is a notable exception, having committed to enhancing biodiversity conservation across all of its facilities by this year and having worked with Harvard University to make the case for the dependence of human health on biodiversity.

We see some cause for optimism in initiatives like the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review, which was launched by Geneva-based business coalition the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the US think tank World Resources Institute (WRI) in 2008 to provide business managers with a means of identifying and managing risks and opportunities arising from dependence and impact on ecosystems. A variety of tools also has been developed in recent years, the most recent being WBCSD%26rsquo;s Ecosystem Valuation Initiative, which enables the quantification of ecosystem risks and opportunities in order to further embed biodiversity values into existing financial and business-planning tools. This tool is being road-tested by 10 to 15 WBCSD member companies, with results due to be reported during the year ahead.

In the longer term, we are hopeful that a new breed of scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors will emerge to drive forward new technologies, new business models and, crucially, a new market paradigm. Consider, for example, US biologist Craig Venter%26rsquo;s trawling of the oceans for new genes for such applications as hydrogen production and synthetic biology, made even more interesting by his US$600-million (4.1 billion yuan) deal with ExxonMobil on algal biofuels. And then there is Janine Benyus%26rsquo;s work on biomimicry, which is worth a chapter in its own right as a source of novel, potentially revolutionary, ideas on materials, products, processes and management systems.

So while the biodiversity glass may seem half empty to some %26ndash; and in danger of draining at an even faster rate as the world%26rsquo;s population pushes towards nine billion by mid-century %26ndash; we choose to see it as still, more or less, half full.

John Elkington is co-founder of SustainAbility and of Volans. Jennifer Biringer is director of client services at SustainAbility and was previously manager of WWF%26rsquo;s North America Forest %26amp; Trade Network.

Homepage image by Dorn Dada

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Dialogue Businesses, financial

Welcome to the International Year of Biodiversity. Throughout 2010, countless initiatives will promote the protection of biodiversity and encourage businesses, governments and individuals to take action to reduce the constant loss of biological diversity worldwide. And not before time.

Biodiversity has long been the Cinderella, the overlooked topic, among environmental issues, with even the chief executives of some of the world%26rsquo;s biggest corporations comfortably confident it has little, if anything, to do with their day-to-day preoccupations %26ndash; except, of course, where their operations directly impact rainforests, temperate wetlands or coral reefs, as in the case of a food company using palm oil whose production has involved the clearance of virgin forest.

Most business leaders assume that the protection of species and genetic diversity is a matter for governments. And they are not wrong in making that assumption. But, as the evidence of biodiversity erosion mounts and the sense of government failure in many parts of the world begins to press in, the risk grows that business will be called to account.

The International Year of Biodiversity will focus on corporations and their supply chains as agents of biodiversity destruction. But it will also, and perhaps more importantly, treat them as one of the few agents of change with the capacity to come up with innovative new solutions to a challenge that has undermined so many past civilisations. So it is worth reviewing why biodiversity is a legitimate concern both for corporations and those who regulate them and why it is unlikely to remain the Cinderella for much longer.

The evidence suggests that biodiversity is declining severely across the board. Forests, for example, have been shrinking at the rate of 60,000 square kilometres a year since 2000; average hard coral cover in the Caribbean has declined from 50% of the sea floor to 10% within the last three decades; and 35% of mangroves have disappeared in the last 20 years. A survey of 3,000 wild species from 1970 to 2000 showed a consistent decline of 40% in average species abundance, with a 50% reduction of inland water species and a 30% decline in inland and marine species.

Were there such a thing as the Board of Earth Inc., it would be facing a reduction in biodiversity and related forms of natural capital at a pace 1,000 times greater than background rates typical of the planet%26rsquo;s past. Even a world that allowed the sub-prime version of capitalism to run riot ought to be more than a little concerned when faced with such trends. Indeed, there is an increasingly urgent imperative to mainstream biodiversity into the policies, plans and budgets of both the public and private sectors.

Although there have been positive private-sector contributions, the response from the business world to these trends and calls to action, over time, has been decidedly mixed. Industries with large footprints, such as oil and gas and mining, were early movers on the biodiversity agenda, due to a visibly direct impact on landscapes and their need to secure a licence to operate. As a consequence, companies like Shell have invested in biodiversity assessments and, more recently, biodiversity offsets.

Likewise, the relationship between the food-production sector and biodiversity came into focus in a high-profile way with campaigns against McDonald%26rsquo;s for purchasing beef raised on former rain forest land and, more recently, feeding chickens with soya grown on deforested Amazon terrain. These and other cases have helped spur the development of better agricultural-management practices to reduce environmental impacts, though they are not spreading nearly fast enough.

In the run-up to last December%26rsquo;s climate change conference in Copenhagen, some government and business leaders acknowledged the ways in which the climate-change agenda could drive a re-evaluation of the services that natural habitats play in regulating carbon cycles and building ecological and economic resilience. However, while sustainability experts agree that biodiversity conservation is a top priority %26ndash; as seen most recently in a 2009 survey from consultancies SustainAbility and Globescan of nearly 1,700 experts across multiple sectors, with 82% agreeing that it is very or somewhat urgent %26ndash; generally business does not appear to rank it as a significant concern.

More specifically, of the 50 leading businesses reporting on sustainability in 2006, we found that only three made an explicit mention of biodiversity as a financially significant concern. The US health-care company Johnson %26amp; Johnson is a notable exception, having committed to enhancing biodiversity conservation across all of its facilities by this year and having worked with Harvard University to make the case for the dependence of human health on biodiversity.

We see some cause for optimism in initiatives like the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review, which was launched by Geneva-based business coalition the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the US think tank World Resources Institute (WRI) in 2008 to provide business managers with a means of identifying and managing risks and opportunities arising from dependence and impact on ecosystems. A variety of tools also has been developed in recent years, the most recent being WBCSD%26rsquo;s Ecosystem Valuation Initiative, which enables the quantification of ecosystem risks and opportunities in order to further embed biodiversity values into existing financial and business-planning tools. This tool is being road-tested by 10 to 15 WBCSD member companies, with results due to be reported during the year ahead.

In the longer term, we are hopeful that a new breed of scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors will emerge to drive forward new technologies, new business models and, crucially, a new market paradigm. Consider, for example, US biologist Craig Venter%26rsquo;s trawling of the oceans for new genes for such applications as hydrogen production and synthetic biology, made even more interesting by his US$600-million (4.1 billion yuan) deal with ExxonMobil on algal biofuels. And then there is Janine Benyus%26rsquo;s work on biomimicry, which is worth a chapter in its own right as a source of novel, potentially revolutionary, ideas on materials, products, processes and management systems.

So while the biodiversity glass may seem half empty to some %26ndash; and in danger of draining at an even faster rate as the world%26rsquo;s population pushes towards nine billion by mid-century %26ndash; we choose to see it as still, more or less, half full.

John Elkington is co-founder of SustainAbility and of Volans. Jennifer Biringer is director of client services at SustainAbility and was previously manager of WWF%26rsquo;s North America Forest %26amp; Trade Network.

Homepage image by Dorn Dada

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Dialogue Businesses, financial

The first is to allow deduction of the input VAT for purchased fixed assets. Before the amendment, input VAT is not allowed to get deducted from the output VAT. The production type VAT system is adopted and that has increased the tax burden of the enterprise buying the machinery and equipment. To reduce the tax burden, the revised VAT regulations remove the practice of such non-deduction, and allow the taxpayer to deduct the input VAT for purchased fixed assets. That helps achieve the transformation of the production type VAT system to one of consumption type.

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Tax Administration, amendment, BUSINESS, Businesses, china, consumption, ENTERPRISE, growth, payment, policies, Regulations, tax, taxes, VAT

I. In order to make it easy for cardholders to use cards, ICBC launched a series of service improvement measures according to international conventions, announced as below:
1. The following service measures have been launched in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Qingdao, Dalian, Ningbo, Haerbin, Shenyang, Wuhan, Changsha, Chengdu, Xi’an, Kunming, Haikou, etc. and the whole provinces of Jiangsu, Guangdong and Zhejiang:

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Banking bank, Banking, Beijing, Businesses, Commission, consumption, Economic, ICBC, payment, Peony Credit Card, SAFE, Shanghai